


Owning Up

by Russ (Quasar)



Series: Time Heals [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2065689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar/pseuds/Russ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon gets acquainted with Jim's new partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Owning Up

**Author's Note:**

> Written May 1999. Takes place after the episode "Siege."

(November 1995)

 

I looked out at the bullpen. All my men were busy with paperwork. Hell, every detective, officer, and clerk in the entire station was busy with paperwork! Nearly a hundred witness reports, thirty of which were vital to the case; a dozen prisoners whose movements during those hours needed to be nailed down perfectly, and the relevant parts of each witness report attached; half a ton of forensic evidence, which then translated into two tons of mess to be cleaned up; and stress debriefings for anyone who'd been present -- all meant that there weren't enough hands to go around.

Ellison was at his desk, staring glumly at the paper in front of him and rubbing his hand. My guess was that he thought anything would be better than what he was doing now. Well, I was ready to prove him wrong.

"Jim." I said it under my breath, just to see what would happen. His head came up at once and he looked straight at me.

I shook my head incredulously. It was still damn hard to wrap my head around the concept that one of my detectives was some kind of superman. "Ellison, I need to speak to you in my office," I called in a more normal tone.

He left his desk looking relieved. We'd see how long that lasted.

"How are the reports coming?" I asked first thing.

He grimaced. "Five more to go, sir."

I settled into my chair and studied my most troublesome detective. Despite the workload, he looked good -- almost cheerful. He still snapped at people, but he seemed to bounce back more quickly after something annoyed him. And just yesterday I'd seen him handing tissues to Rhonda and patting her shoulder as she suffered through another trauma-induced crying jag. A few weeks ago he would have just passed her the box and walked away.

It occurred to me that I hadn't seen Ellison this relaxed since he first started dating Carolyn. I wondered if there was someone new in his life. I didn't know of anyone, except for this Sandburg person -- and _that_ was not something I even wanted to consider.

Jim apparently thought I'd been staring at him too long, so he started the ball rolling. "How's Daryl holding up? I haven't seen him since the takeover."

I sighed. "Joan's got him seeing some high-priced shrink -- she doesn't trust the department debriefing experts. I tried to persuade her that it would be best for him to attend at least a few of the group sessions with the other hostages, but she won't hear of it. Actually, I think she doesn't want him coming to the station ever again."

"That's rough. I'm sorry, Simon."

"What about your cous-- your friend Sandburg? He taking it okay? Is he really going to _want_ to go on with this observer business?"

Jim looked blank. "I don't know. I haven't seen that much of him since it happened. I mean --" he waved a hand "-- I've been buried in paperwork and all . . ."

"He hasn't been attending the sessions," I said severely.

"Not the organized groups, no. But I do know he's been talking to some of the other hostages, helping them vent and so on."

I nodded. "Yeah, especially the young female hostages. Look, Jim, you tell him that he needs to go through a proper debriefing or I can't approve him staying on as an observer."

Jim winced. "I'll tell him that, sir."

"And how about you? How are you doing?" I asked carefully.

Misinterpreting my question, he rolled his shoulders a little. "Not bad. Stiffness is almost gone."

I remembered standing on the roof and watching the helicopter returning. "I thought you were crazy when I saw you hanging from that thing." Actually, I'd thought he had a death wish, and I'd blamed myself for not listening when he asked for time off during the Switchman case. But he had seemed to steady down when that case was cleared up -- and after all, he _had_ survived dangling from a helicopter strut with another man dangling from him.

Jim just shrugged. "I couldn't let Kincaid get away -- not after what he'd done."

I watched him closely. "Your buddy Sandburg was on that chopper, too."

"Yeah." He made a grimace. "I don't know what Kincaid had planned for him, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty."

He sounded concerned about Sandburg, but not desperately so. I couldn't get a handle on the connection between them. "All right, Jim. Time to come clean. Tell me about Sandburg," I commanded.

Jim looked blank. "Well . . . he's an anthropologist. He's trying to get his PhD at Rainier. He's made a study of people with senses like mine."

I felt the planet lurch on its axis. "You mean there are more of you?"

Jim glanced away to the corners of the room. "Well . . . he said he'd never actually found anyone else with five senses enhanced. But he has met people with one or two hyperactive senses, and he's read about Sentinels."

"Sentinels?"

"Like me. That's what he calls this . . . thing with my senses."

"I see." I didn't, not really. Stalling for time to think, I leaned forward and pulled a cigar from the humidor on my desk, sniffing the sweet blend with anticipation.

Jim sneezed. Then coughed. Then sneezed again. "'Scuse me," he gasped, wiping his eyes. He was giving my cigar the evil eye.

"What, you're allergic to tobacco now?"

"No . . ." He sneezed again. "Just a little over-sensitive."

I looked at the cigar regretfully. If I lit up, Jim probably wouldn't be able to speak between spasms. I put the cigar away and extended a box of tissues across the desk toward him. He nodded in thanks as he grabbed a tissue just in time to catch another sneeze.

"Sadburg thigs I cad leard to cudtrol this," Jim managed, and honked into the tissue.

I frowned. "You didn't have any trouble controlling it the other day," I said, remembering the man Jim had smelled approaching us. If the guy's aftershave had set off a fit like this one, we would have been toast.

Jim sniffed once more and spoke a little more intelligibly. "Well . . . I almost couldn't go through with the plan when I got a whiff of that sewer."

Right -- I had thought Ellison was just being a prima donna at the time, but now I winced at the idea of what a sewer must smell like to a man who could identify colognes at twenty paces through a closed door.

"See, this sensory thing has some serious disadvantages," Jim went on. "Common household products throw me for a loop sometimes, I get distracted by the craziest things in the middle of crossing the street . . . It can be a real pain. I'm not even sure I _want_ this. But Sandburg says I don't get a choice, now that I'm online."

"Wait," I interrupted. "You mean you weren't always like this?"

"It's been . . . dormant, I guess. Sandburg thinks I have a genetic predisposition." Jim shrugged one shoulder, looking away from me uneasily. "Anyway, he says he can help me get a handle on the everyday stuff. 'Limiting the input,' he calls it."

"And you believe him?" I said doubtfully. I was beginning to get uncomfortable with the frequency of the words 'Sandburg says' in this conversation.

Jim nodded. "He's a master of BS, sure, but so far he's been right on the money with this sensory stuff. Every time. I wouldn't have stopped the Switchman without his help."

I thought back to some of the oddities of that case. "So Sandburg was the one who came up with that shampoo lead you tried to sell me on?"

"He was right, Captain. The kid's good at this stuff."

"Hmm," I said, glaring at my humidor.

Ellison was silent. When I looked up at him, the man was staring blankly right through my desk.

"Jim? Hey, Jim! What's up with you? Ellison!"

He gave a start. "Sorry, sir. He's here."

"Who's here?"

"Sandburg. He just arrived."

"Good. Call him in and I'll talk to him myself."

"Uh . . . he's not up here, yet. He's still down in the garage." He looked distant for a moment. "Now he's in the elevator."

"You can hear that far away?" How many noises did the man have to sort through to pick out a single person seven flights below us?

Ellison shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I don't really know what I can do, sir. I'm still figuring it out. That's something else Sandburg's been helping me with."

A minute later, glancing through the blinds on my office windows, I saw the BS artist himself arrive in the bullpen. He paused near Ellison's desk, looking at a loss.

Jim cracked my door open and called, "In here, Chief."

I frowned. Jim used nicknames for almost everyone, but this sounded like something special. Like Jack Pendergrast slapping 'Slick' on Jim when he took the younger detective under his wing. I sure as hell hoped this association wouldn't end as badly as that one.

Sandburg came in with a backpack slung over his shoulder and a nervous smile plastered on his face. "Uh, morning, Captain."

"Mr. Sandburg," I said neutrally. "Captain Taggert tells me you did a good job in that hostage situation the other day. I hear you knocked out a couple of Kincaid's men?"

The kid checked Jim's reaction, but Jim was staring at me. So Sandburg just shrugged. "It was sort of by accident. I was just trying to find a way to get out, really."

His words sounded genuine, with no taint of false modesty. "That was only sensible," I conceded. "How's the arm?"

It was supposed to be a simple, polite expression of concern, but the kid looked guilty and shifted a little away from Ellison. "It's okay."

"Arm?" Ellison demanded. "What happened to your arm? And why didn't I hear about you taking out Kincaid's men?"

Sandburg's eyes went round. "Well, I --"

I interrupted. "Come on, Jim! You can hear people talking from a few floors away, and you didn't notice that your buddy got shot?"

"You were shot?" Ellison loomed over the kid, who held his hands up anxiously and started talking a mile a minute.

"No! Not really. I mean, it hardly broke the skin. They said it didn't need stitches. I just have this big bruise from the bullet slap, that's all. See?" He moved his arm a little. "It's fine."

"You can't lift it high?"

"I can, but I don't want to. The sleeve will pull. I said it was bruised, man -- that's all, I swear!"

I was staring. I'd never seen Jim act so protective of anyone since -- well, Carolyn came to mind again. Maybe Jim _had_ jumped on that helicopter for the kid's sake.

"Jim, give the guy some space. He said he's okay. Now, Mr. Sandburg." I tried for a genial smile. "Why don't you tell me about the _real_ research you're doing with Jim?"

He gulped, obviously ordering his thought. "My research. Um, well, Sentinels were first mentioned in a monograph by Sir Richard Burton -- the explorer, not the actor --"

I helped up a hand. "I don't need the whole history of the thing. Just keep it simple. How do you know this is what's happening to Jim?"

The kid glanced at my detective again. He was off-balance, but more importantly, he wasn't trying to mesmerize me with a direct stare the way he had when he first pitched his plan to observe Ellison. I knew what to look for now if I ever suspected Sandburg was lying to me.

"Well, uh -- he's got the senses. That's demonstrable. They're enhanced beyond anything I've ever seen. Aside from that, the fact that he's in a public service occupation, and the way his senses were brought on-line by prolonged isolation -- it all fits the pattern Burton talked about."

"What isolation?" I demanded. And what did Jim's job have to do with it?

Jim shifted his weight. "The Switchman stakeout," he murmured.

Right. That was when Ellison had first come to me looking all troubled.

"And before that, Peru," said Sandburg. His eyes were starting to shine with excitement.

"I told you, I don't remember that, Chief."

"But it makes sense, man! You needed an edge to survive out there. And the natives you were working with -- they would have known just how to deal with your Sentinel abilities. It would be normal to them. It was in the South American tribes that Burton first noticed the Sentinel phenomenon."

He went on saying something about how Sentinels were found in tribes across the globe, but I was watching rather than listening. What caught my attention was Sandburg's expression whenever he looked at Jim. It reminded me of the look on Daryl's face when he watched Brandy on MTV. Part hero worship, part . . . something else.

Sandburg had a crush on Ellison.

I nearly groaned out loud when I figured it out. This was not good. Ellison could be very touchy on that particular point. I remembered Jack Pendergrast ripping up at Ellison years ago for ruining some lead they'd been following. Some guy made a pass at Jim, and his reaction set off a bar brawl that took five patrol units to quench and nearly landed both my detectives in the hospital.

Well, obviously Ellison hadn't clued in yet. He'd mellowed a bit in the past few years, but I couldn't see him smiling like that at a guy who'd put the moves on him. He was more patient with this kid -- indulgent, even -- than he had been with anyone since the early days of his marriage. Sandburg _might_ take that as a sign that Jim would be receptive to an advance. But he'd be in for a big surprise if he tried anything.

Sandburg was still talking: " . . . partner to help them work through the kinds of problems that a Sentinel can encounter --"

"What problems?" I asked.

Sandburg was only too happy to elaborate. "Well, first there's the zone-out factor. That's when a Sentinel concentrates on one stimulus to the exclusion of everything else. But I have some ideas for how Jim could balance his senses to avoid that problem. And there may be an increased chemical sensitivity -- Burton wasn't really clear on that point. If it does show up, we could treat it like allergies -- either avoidance, or desensitization, or some kind of combination of the two. Then there's the fact that hyperactive senses could be an obvious vulnerability in, say, a gunfight. Jim needs some way to turn them down, as well as up. . . . Basically, I think we need to go with a dynamic sort of strategy here."

What the hell did that mean? I looked at Jim, who shrugged.

"By that I mean we need to be ready to deal with new things as they come up. We may have to try more than one solution, or a combination of things -- that's why I need to work with Detective Ellison, so I can catch problems as they happen."

I considered. Ellison really seemed to think this kid knew what he was talking about. And I could see that Sandburg was more genuine -- more passionate -- than he had been about that first spiel he fed me.

The only problem was the question of their relationship.

Maybe it was worth a try, anyway. Sooner or later Jim would figure out that Sandburg was after more than a dissertation subject here, and he'd throw the guy out on his ass. Obviously, by playing up the potential problems, Sandburg was trying to get himself some long-term employment here. But how long could it really take until Jim had a handle on things and was ready to go out on his own?

So I told them I'd go along with it. I supported Sandburg's request for an observer's pass -- although he almost lost the privilege a couple weeks later, going along with some crazy scheme of Jim's that a proper partner would have nipped in the bud.

Then, a month later, Sandburg moved in with Jim, and I started to get very worried.


End file.
